The World Might Have Entered Into Another Epoch – The Anthropocene

On August 29, an expert group at the World Geological Congress in Cape Town recommended that the new epoch – Anthropocene – be officially declared. It claimed that the time had come to ring down the curtain on the Holocene, the current epoch, and recognising that Earth has entered a new one, the Anthropocene.

What is an epoch?
Epoch is a subdivision of the geologic timescale. Others are era, age, period and so on. Geological history of the earth has been through many such epochs like Paleocene, Miocene, Pleistocene, Holocene, etc. Currently we are living in Holocene epoch.

Holocene
The Holocene epoch began 12,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age. This is a climatically and geologically stable period. It encompasses the growth and impacts of the human species worldwide, including all its written history, development of major civilizations, and overall significant transition toward urban living in the present.

Anthropocene
Recently, there has been a growing consensus among geologists that we are living in a new geological epoch marked by the impact human beings have had on Earth since the 20th century. As its name suggests, the point of this new epoch would be to acknowledge that humans, far from being mere passengers on the planet’s surface, now fundamentally affect the way it works.

Doom inching closer
Since the 1950s, human beings have begun to alter the earth’s surface and atmosphere in significant ways. Significant geological changes, which usually take thousands of years, have occurred in less than a century.

The unprecedented increase in the extinction rates of flora and fauna, large amounts of radioactive material in the atmosphere and the surface of the earth (caused by nuclear testing), an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide and an unprecedented amount of plastic in the earth’s surface and on the ocean floor testify the claim.

There has been expansion of food production. In 1750 about 5% of the Earth’s surface was farmed. That figure is now around 50%. This has huge costs in terms of changes in the nature of the soil. In addition to this, dams hold back billions of tonnes of silt. As a result, river deltas everywhere are shrinking.

When does Anthropocene start then?
The group pushed for high point of nuclear-weapons testing since 1950s as the starting point of the new epoch. Fallout from those tests scattered plutonium, an element vanishingly rare in nature, far and wide across the planet. At the congress, the AWG’s members voted for this “bomb spike” to be the marker. That makes the Anthropocene more than half a century old already.

So is it official?
Not yet. The proposal must make its way through several strata of geological bureaucracy. The last step will be a vote at a meeting of the International Union of Geological Sciences. If that passes, then we can claim to be officially in the new epoch.

Opportunity
The new age also presents an opportunity. The hope now is that humankind and its leaders can collectively and consciously take their new responsibility seriously. With climate change consciousness emerging among societies and governments all across the world, this presents as a good opportunity to self-introspect and engage in positive manner to save humankind from our own made kalyug.

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Know Why This Small Town In Tamil Nadu Is In The Guinness Book Of World Records

Did you know there is a town at the southern tip of India that can be called ‘Heaven on Earth’. Its people realise the importance of keeping the environment clean.

Madukkarai Panchayat in Coimbatore district, Tamil Nadu, is the cleanest place in India, owing to around 50 women who wake up every day to collect waste from each and every household in the town. At 6 AM, the women set out to work with their green jackets on, hands covered in gloves and caps adjusted perfectly on their heads. Every morning they line up for the roll call. These ‘Green Friends’ are part of the solid waste management program supported by ACC Cement – Madukkarai.

Madukkarai, a small town at the tip of the country, is in the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest recycling lesson in the world. With the help of around 50 women, who are now called ‘Green Friends’, and a simple, scalable model, this town is leading the way for efficient waste management. #SwachhBharat

While most of us find someone to put the blame on, Madukkarai decided to take control in their own hands. The town has 8,000 households and a population of 42,000. 82% of the homes hand over garbage to ‘Green Friends’ every day. 1,440 tonnes of garbage is collected annually from the town of 18 wards and 107 streets.

There is a lot that we can learn from Madukkarai. One of the most disturbing realities that we face, despite which part of the country we reside in, is the similar dirt everywhere – garbage piled up on roadside, drains clogged with plastic bags and dogs chewing on the leftover food we have callously thrown on the streets.

We keep our homes clean; make sure that the floors are mopped every day. But why do we not share the same sentiment for our surroundings? We hardly realize that the street outside our home is as much ours as is anybody else’s. We are the ones who use these roads every day to commute. Madukkarai realized this and the importance of a clean environment for our health and well-being.

Guinness Book of World Records for the largest recycling lesson in the world

‘Green Friends’ collect household wastes in eight different bins for wet waste, kitchen waste, plastic waste, etc. This is then disposed in large bins kept in several parts of the town. Trucks pick up this waste daily and take it to the resource recovery park where the garbage is recycled.

The treatment center segregates the different types of wastes. The kitchen waste is converted into fertilizers and given to farmers at extremely low prices to use in cultivation of their crops. The plastic waste is processed to be used in the construction of roads, and also at the large ACC factory where it is used as fuel at high temperatures which does not even cause pollution.

Due to the efforts of ‘Green Friends’, the citizens of Madukkarai, and the municipality, there has been a 60% reduction in landfill waste over the span of three years. There has also been a 50% reduction in the vehicle movement to the landfill sites, 85% of organic waste is converted successfully into vermin compost, ample reduction in the use of fossil fuels, reduction in greenhouse gas emission to 60%, and substantial decrease in the spread of malaria and dengue among the people. Furthermore, barren lands provided for compost yard have been successfully converted into fully functional organic compost yard and non-recyclable waste is used as an alternative energy source for the cement industry.

Madukkarai’s citizens have also become more environment-friendly, with 30% of the households segregating the organic-recyclable waste at home.

What we can learn

Madukkarai has paved the way to the sustainable development of our world. They have shown us that is not impossible to keep our environment clean. All we need is to inculcate in us a concern for mother Earth. It is commendable that ACC is supporting Madukkarai in its venture and helping it stay clean.

We, as citizens of other towns, cities, villages and states in India, have a lot to learn from Madukkarai. We too can have a healthier life if only we care enough and practice our civil duties proudly.